


Fall of the Apprentice

by RedBlood_Moon



Series: An Apprentice [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Ahsoka Tano-centric, Ahsoka joins Vader, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Ahsoka Tano, Darth Vader-centric, Gen, Hurt Ahsoka Tano, POV Ahsoka Tano, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope, Sith Ahsoka Tano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27935125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedBlood_Moon/pseuds/RedBlood_Moon
Summary: She had never even considered that she might fall to the dark side one day. But on the other hand, she had thought the same about Anakin and look where it had led her. And who knows? Maybe this had always been their destiny.
Relationships: Ahsoka Tano & Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader & Ahsoka Tano
Series: An Apprentice [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2045597
Comments: 46
Kudos: 80
Collections: Real Good Shit





	Fall of the Apprentice

**Fall of the Apprentice**

**I**

She had felt cold before, but nothing that could compare to _this_.

_This_ cold didn’t come from the environment as it did on planets like Hoth, freezing your skin with harsh winds and layers of snow and ice. No, this cold came from the inside. She could feel it penetrate her mind, fill her head with images and thoughts not her own until the dread she felt consumed her. It made her rethink everything she thought she knew about the meaning of being cold while she froze to death, slowly but surely.

She could feel the dark threads wrapping around her, pushing and _drilling_ against the skin of her skull until her barriers fell one after another. Pressing on until she couldn’t do anything to keep the cold out. She couldn’t even attempt to warm herself by rubbing her arms because she couldn’t move them at all _. But why couldn’t she move them? That was wrong, that was-_

She had felt this darkness before; back during the Clone Wars, back when she faced Ventress, Maul and even Dooku on a somewhat regular basis. But their presence had been so much _less;_ less dark, less powerful, less angry, less _cold_.

Less suffering.

The pain, oh Force, the pain – _please make it stop, please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please-_

Maybe this darksider was just much more powerful than even Dooku or maybe Anakin and Obi-Wan had been shielding her from that darkness, back in the day when both of them had been still alive – _wait, you don’t know if they’re dead! Maybe they’re just hiding, waiting. Maybe_ -

Even if they were, they still would have made no effort in finding her or even replying to her attempts to reach out to them. Surely they wouldn’t hide their Force presence from _her,_ surely Anakin wouldn’t just close off their bond from her just like that, _leaving her alone_ , surely-

**“KHOOOOH PUUUHRR“**

The sound of mechanical breathing brought her –more or less- back to the present. Gathering all the strength she had left, she raised her mental walls once again, doing her very best to keep the darkness out of her head in an attempt of hopefully stopping it from messing with her mind _too much_.

She remembered it now; her mission on some out-of-the-way moon whose name she couldn’t recall, the Force not warning her of the approaching danger, the Imperial patrol, the _Sith Lord_ accompanying it...

Her capture.

“You can't fool me, _Apprentice,_ ” the Voice said, and its sound alone was enough to fill her with dread. “Open your eyes.”

She didn't want to. Maybe it was because her mind was still sluggish, but she thought - _hoped_ \- that maybe the Voice would go away if she just didn't acknowledge it. It would just go to where it came from, plopping out of existence and leaving her alone, allowing her to gather herself.

“I told you to _open your eyes._ You will do as you're told, _Apprentice_.”

Her eyelids were forced open without anyone touching them. The pain would have made her scream in agony if the sight in front of her hadn't stolen her breath; towering above her was a dark figure, clad in black with a mask that resembled a skull hiding its face. Its cape swung behind it even though she couldn't feel a single breeze and its arms were defiantly folded across its chest. The only bright thing about the figure was the chest area where the flickering lights were located, the red and green dots making the sight somehow even more terrifying. They were a false hope, a false promise that there was a light at the end of the tunnel when in truth, there was nothing but death.

And then there was the breathing, a constant rasp that filled her ears in regular intervals.

“ **KHOOOOH PUUUHRR**

**KHOOOOH PUUUHRR**

**KHOOOOH PUUUHRR”**

There was no escape, no way to blend the sound out. She vaguely remembered that she thought at some point of her captivity that the silence of her cell - _oh, right, she was in a cell. She must be chained, that's why she couldn't move-_ was bad, but this death rattle was _horrible_.

But the worst thing was the Force that surrounded the figure.

Only now that she was in its direct presence did she realize how good she had it before, only now did she remember the instances where the figure had visited her cell before, and all she could do was to hope that it would leave again so that she could find at least _some_ peace. Not that she ever achieved that, but her attempts had better results when her captor wasn't there.

Her vision became blurry when she looked at him for too long, but she couldn't look away no matter how hard she tried. Even blinking was a chore. The darkness emitting from the figure was overwhelming; it pressed her down like a never-ending ocean, filling her lungs and taking the place where precious oxygen was supposed to be, only to leave for long enough for her to take a single breath every time she thought she would suffocate before returning to repeat the cycle from anew. _Maybe that's why he wears the mask,_ she thought bleary. _Because the darkness is suffocating him as well._

For a single moment, his presence reminded her of _something,_ but the only image that came to her mind was the pale, grotesque face of the Son with his horrible red eyes and that couldn't be right.

The figure tilted its head like some feline creature whose name she couldn't recall, and somehow she knew he had heard her thoughts even though she still tried her best to keep her mental walls up. She tensed up, waiting for a rebuttal or punishment, only to be surprised when the figure spoke to her in a monotone voice.

“Do you want to know why I wear this mask, _Apprentice_?”

“Don't call me that!” She had blurted that out before she could stop herself, ignoring the way her voice cracked as if she hadn't used it for anything than screaming in a long time. “You have no right to call me that!”

_("Getting ahead of yourself, aren't you, Snips?”_

_"Don't call me that. I hate it when you call me that!”)_

When it answered, she thought for a moment she could hear amusement in its voice, but it was gone a second later and she had no way of confirming whether or not she had imagined it or not. “Did you forget our last conversation already, _Apprentice_ ? I have every right to call you how I see fit and there is nothing that can change that. It would be wise to remember that _this time._ ”

Her forehead furrowed in concentration while she tried to remember what they had spoken about the last time -or any time before that- the figure came to visit her, but all she could think of was its towering figure and the constant sound of its breathing.

“Tell me, _Apprentice_ ,” the figure said while stepping forward, lowering its head until she thought she would be able to reach out and touch his mask if she only could move her arms, “do you know who I am?”

The name came to her mind instantly, sounding familiar on her tongue even though she was sure she hadn't known it until a moment ago. “Vader,” she said breathlessly. “Darth Vader. A Sith.”

The Force around them became agitated. It almost felt _eager_ , as if it was waiting for something special that it had been looking forward to for a long, _long_ time. The feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, which she had managed to suppress for the most part so far, intensified in turn.

“Yes,” Vader said, and she thought he would be _purring_ if not for the way his respirator distorted his voice. “And do you remember who I told you I was before?”

She didn't notice that her fingernails were biting into her palms until she felt something hot - _her blood,_ her mind contributed numbly- running down her hands. What did he mean by that? What did it matter who he was, how _could_ it matter in face of all the crimes he had committed?

She could hear a voice screaming at her to not listen to him, to ignore what he was saying and stay strong, but the voice was somehow muted. She could still hear it, but it was easy enough to ignore.

And she wanted to ignore it. Something inside of her was telling her that this information was important, that she _needed_ to know it. She just _knew_ that the answer had something to do with the questions that held her awake at night for years now, questions that _needed_ to be answered.

Suddenly, without any warning, a presence was pushing into her mind, brushing aside her panicked counter-attack and crushing her shields like they were nothing. There was nothing she could do to stop him, but even as weak as she was now, it just wasn't in her nature to give up. With a snarl on her lips, she lunged at the intruder, mental claws clawing at it, only to break on what felt like durasteel. She didn't get a second chance because the next moment, she was grasped with so much force that she thought she would throw up. The power behind the mental grip overpowered her without any struggle and thus making her effectively a prisoner in her own mind.

For a moment, fear and anger were fighting for dominance in her before panic overpowered both emotions. She tried releasing them into the Force like she had learned so long ago even though she hadn't done that ever since she left the Order, choosing to accept her emotions instead of ignoring them, but not even that wanted to work.

“Good,” a voice boomed _inside her head_ , “use your anger. Only so you can hope to free yourself, only so you can get the answers you seek. It's the only way.”

_(“There is a wildness to you, young one. Seeds of the dark side planted by your master. Do you feel it?”)_

She wanted to scream at him that she would never do that, that she would never use the dark side no matter what he or some strange vision of herself thought, but she got distracted by a weird tingle in some abandoned corner of her mind. Strangely enough, Vader weakened his mental grip on her enough for her to wriggle until she could put her attention to this feeling.

She didn't need long to recognize what it was; the bond she had shared with Anakin, the one she had blocked out after leaving the Order only to reach out to it in panic when she could feel all the Jedi in the galaxy die one after another, was acting up for the first time in almost five years. Hurriedly she reached for it, completely forgetting about her captor for a moment while hope bloomed in her chest because this must mean that Anakin was alive! Anakin was alive and he would come and save her and she would tell him how sorry she was about how she acted the last time - _I'm so sorry, please forgive me, I missed you, sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry_ -

They could fight side by side like in old times, and together they could kill Vader, the Emperor and his Inquisitors and bring peace and freedom-

_(“I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new empire!”)_

And then she felt to where the bond led her, who was on the other end of it, and all of a sudden, she felt as if all the air was knocked out of her lungs. “No,” she muttered in a whisper, the pain clear to hear in her voice. “That's impossible! Anakin would never-”

“Anakin Skywalker is dead. I destroyed him.”

_(“Do you know what I've become?”)_

One after another, the memories of previous conversations with Vader - _Anakin? No, he couldn't! That was impossible!_ \- came back to her, making the weight of the truth press onto her even more than the seemingly endless ocean of darkness that had already surrounded her.

“Do you want to know why I wear this armour?” Vader asked, bringing the conversation back to where it had started. All Ahsoka could do to stay sane was to cling to his words instead of walking down the rabbit hole that was her thoughts.

Suddenly Vader reached out with his right arm, holding the palm of his hand right before her face, and the next thing she knew as her eyes rolled back and she lost consciousness was endless darkness.

* * *

There was a clarity in her dreams that she hadn't felt in _months_ -ever since her capture- while she was awake. And while none of them was nice; she took them over being in that cell with nothing to do besides waiting for the next inevitable visit of Vad- _Anakin_.

There was no way to deny it when she could feel the truth of it so clearly, especially now that she was back in the world of her dreams. And while she didn't want it to be true - _Force, how could that be the truth? How did that happen?_ \- there was nothing she could do to change it. Maybe she could have stopped it, done something to help Anakin with whatever it was that pushed him over the edge, but she hadn't been with him. She hadn't been with him because she had left, she-

( _"I made a choice. I couldn't stay."_

 _"You were selfish!"_ )

She forcefully stopped this line of thoughts with a shaky breath, swallowing down the anger, sadness and even the disgust she felt for herself at the moment with a silent promise to deal with them later.

Just like she had done all the times before.

She knew that technically, she hadn't done anything wrong. Yes, she shouldn't have been as rude to Anakin as she had been during their last meeting, but other than that? No, she had been justified in leaving the Order, justified in wanting to find her own way. She hadn't abandoned him. And how could she have known that he was so close to falling that-

_You could have contacted him_ , a voice that sounded suspiciously like her own whispered. _Or you could have not blocked him out when he tried to reach you through your bond. No, that's on you._

Deciding to ignore the voice - _because when did ignoring your problems not come back to bite you later?_ \- she looked around, only to find that she had no idea where she was.

She might not remember her dreams when she was awake, but all the memories returned once she was back here. It wasn't pleasant to relive her worst memories without being able to change anything, to watch her friends die again and again without being able to do anything about it, but at least she knew how to deal with that. It had happened before, after all. The dreams were things happened differently from how she remembered them were worse; either those that had originally survived died or people that were her friends betrayed her - _Oh, Barriss, why did you do that? Didn't we fight side by side? Weren't we friends?_ \- and left her behind to suffer on her own.

She took slow and unstable steps over the burned earth under her feet, walking towards the sound of clashing lightsabers she could hear in the distance. She didn't want to, really, but she had learned by now that trying to run away in these cursed dreams made things only _worse_.

She had walked less than a minute when she tripped for what would surely be the first but not the last time and she needed a few moments to get up again. She was just _so tired_ ! Wasn't sleep supposed to help you regenerate your energy? Didn't that mean you shouldn't be capable of being tired in your dreams because you were _literally_ doing the very thing that was supposed to cure that? As things were right now, all she wanted to do was closing her eyes and never wake up.

It felt like hours until she finally managed to reach the top of the hill she had been climbing, arriving just in time to see Anakin - _young and healthy Anakin, not Vader in a suit of armour and more machine than man! Anakin with three healthy limbs, a cocky but warm smile and twinkling eyes_ \- jump through the air, only to be dismembered by no one else than Obi-Wan Kenobi.

For a few seconds, all she could do was to stand there and stare down with wide eyes as the form of her former Master laid on the edge of a lava river, all his remaining limbs gone. She knew Obi-Wan was screaming something at Anakin, but she couldn't hear anything; all her senses were solely focused on the crippled form of her master.

And he stared right back at her with two yellow eyes.

She started running towards him without really thinking about it, passing Obi-Wan without so much as a glance, all the while keeping eye-contact with him and wondering why Obi-Wan wasn't helping him. Couldn't he see that Anakin was in pain? Didn't he know what would happen soon if they didn't get him away from the lava? _He cut him into little pieces, why would he care if he burned to death?_

Just as she thought about it, her fears became true and the stumps of his legs caught fire, but even when he started screaming -and oh Force, the pain, _please make it stop, please please please please please please please please please please please please-_ his eyes kept locked with hers.

When she finally reached him, which was much later than it should have been considering the short distance, the fire had already stopped, leaving nothing but an unrecognizable mess of burned flesh behind. Her tiredness was all but forgotten while she grasped his one metal arm, trying to pull him away from the lave even though she knew it was already too late, but she just couldn't move him no matter how hard she tried.

_“Ahsoka.”_

She froze.

Anak- _Vader_ was still looking at her, his gaze much more intense than anything she had ever seen before. She instinctively wanted to back away, her instincts telling her that she was in the presence of a predator she couldn't hope to match even though he was barely more than a corpse and she, a Togruta, was a predator herself, but the grasp of his hand tightened and she found herself unable to.

_“Will you betray me as well?”_

Images flashed before her inner eye, of mission after mission where she and her master had each other's back. Of all the times he and she saved each other's lives, of all the hugs and concerned glances when the other got hurt on a mission.

She saw the Council looking down on her, judging and not believing her before throwing her out of the Order without even giving her a real chance to explain how she was being set up, and once again felt the betrayal at how even Master Plo and Obi-Wan hadn't had her back. How only her master had believed in her.

_“Will you leave me again?”_

She watched herself walking away from her master, not once turning around while stepping down the stairs that lead her away from the temple. She might have been justified in leaving, but had it been truly the right decision? Anakin had been unhappy with the way things went for a long time, she knew that just like she knew that he had emotions for Padmé and that he too wanted to leave the Order for much longer than she did.

But he never did, he stayed there while she left.

_("I would never let anyone hurt you Ahsoka, never!”)_

Could she say the same? Hadn't she hurt him by not only leaving but also avoiding contact with him? But she had needed time for herself, she needed to think, and Anakin had others who cared about him even-

Flashes of Obi-Wan's supposed death at the hand of a bounty hunter appeared before her eyes and she remembered not only her own pain but Anakin's at well. But best of all, she remembered the feeling of betrayal- from both of them but especially his- once the truth came out.

Suddenly all the emotions she had been ignoring for weeks -months, years- descended upon her now. All the pain over the loss of her family and nearly all her friends, her regrets over how she had acted towards those she loved, the anger at the Empire, Palpatine, and even the Republic and the Jedi and at Obi-Wan specifically. But more than everything else, the anger and disgust directed at herself.

She was just so tired; tired of being left alone, tired losing people she cared about, tired about drawing the short end of the stick all the time.

_“Stay with me. Stand at my side, and together we can bring peace, freedom and justice to the Empire. Together, we will rule the galaxy!”_

She knew she should turn him down immediately, that it wasn't right and that normally she would never even consider turning to the dark side, but the thought of leaving Anakin - _was it Anakin or Vader? Did it even matter?_ \- for good made her pause.

Would it be so bad to join him? There were a few truths in the universe that just didn't change and one of those was that there was nothing she and her master couldn't achieve when they worked together. They could bring peace, _real peace_ , to the galaxy and then keep it. Who could possibly stop them? The thought of doing the job the Jedi were supposed to do was tempting, she though.

The Jedi and the Republic had made many promises, promises they didn't keep. But the two of them, they could do everything they were supposed to do and more. Together.

“I won't leave you,” she said, ignoring the way her voice sounded off in favour of looking at the prone figure lying in front of her. “Not this time.”

He stared at her unchanged for a few more seconds before his lips tugged upwards in some pale imitation of the smug smile she had seen Anakin make countless times whenever one of his plans worked out just like they were supposed to.

“Good,” he said, and just for a moment before he suddenly pulled with all his might on her arm, throwing her above his body right into the lava behind him, she thought she could feel something like happiness or relief through their old bond.

She hadn't had any time to think about it further once she felt the flames burning her, purging her of her weakness. But even while she screamed in pain, she knew that by the time she would get out of the river she would be reborn, rising from the ashes just like phoenixes of legends.

Just like her master had before her.

* * *

When she finally opened her eyes after what could have been either minutes or days, she was no longer chained nor did she feel uncomfortable in the presence of her master. In fact, now that she could feel the same power flow through her, it was hard to believe that she had been _scared_ of this just a short time ago!

“Stand,” Vader's voice pulled her out of her thoughts. “Your first test awaits you already, Apprentice.”

She stood up as he had commanded before lowering her head in submission. “As you wish, Master.”

Looking up again, she couldn't suppress the shiver that ran down her back.

There, reflected from her master's polished helmet, was her own face, staring at her with two yellow burning eyes.


End file.
